Legend of The Galactic Heroes Episodes 1-6
With work slowing to a crawl since the Swedes are reconsidering _how_ they want their subtitles, the Americans are not sending us anything and the British are ... I dunno, having tea or something; I decided to finally take the leap and try out this old series, which I've been wanting to for some years now.
At work, no less. Hopefully no one peeks in. ^_-
Central Anime has them up at scarywater and they're up to the 84th episode of a 110 episode series - with 3 movies and a 52 episode Gaiden series still not being subbed.
Ginga Eiyu Densetsu, or as the fake German on the sub has it Heldensagen vom Kosmosinsel, is essentially a story about a centuries long galactic war between the Free Planets Alliance and the Galactic Empire, the soldiers who fight it, the admirals who lead them, and everyone else in between. The sensibility it projects is that of The Romance of The Three Kingdoms but set in the future. But that's an oversimplification.
Episode 1 starts with a bang as we are introduced to the setting: two interstellar countries at war with a third playing Switzerland in between. A major battle is about to begin in the Astarte system and we get to zoom in. This is when we meet the two main characters: Reinhard von Lohengramm is fleet admiral of the Galactic Empire who is outnumbered 3 to 1, but he has a plan; Yang Wenli, hero of El Facil, is a laid-back tactical genius for the Alliance who's advice of caution is ignored because the fleet commanders are sure in their numerical superiority and divide the fleet into sub-fleets for an encirclement.
Guess who wins, the man with the plan or the guys who outnumber him?
Reinhard picks off the divided fleets one-by-one and cuts the lead in numbers making it into a fair fight. The perspective shifts around during the battle catching the reactions of everyone from the lowest "fighter" pilot to the fleet captains. Heck, we even have a "touching death" sequence: you know the guy takes out a picture of his girl then dies. It sounds cliche but really it was done nice.
At the end of episode 1, the remaining Alliance fleet is up the creek without a paddle as Reinhard goes in for the kill.
Episode 2 starts with Yang getting the chance to take over when his commander gets injured. Yang consolidates his command and with a tactical maneuver turns the entire battle into a stalemate.
Side note: though space is 3d, much of the battle tactics make more sense in a 2d battle - I'd have done more three-dimensional maneuvering if I were Yang or Reinhard. But the series seems to be more a space opera/drama than a Honor Harrington novel or any other work of military science fiction so we'll just let that pass.
Anyway, shifting perspectives again is used to demonstrate everything happening - quite to good effect actually.
The episode ends with Reinhard backing off and heading home - with the Alliance and the Empire both declaring themselves the winner; the Alliance won by spind doctoring their claim of being left on the field of battle and the Empire won by killing 1.5 million soldiers to their 25,000 loss.
Guess we all know who really won that one, huh?
Episodes 3 and 4 are character chapters. Ep 3 is with Yang Wenli as he gets promoted to Admiral for his win and how he exactly got roped into the military. We also see Lapp's poor fiancee, Julia, harassed by Space-Nazis controlled by the granstanding Alliance Secretary of Defense who she embarassed and how Yang shuts them down with a fire hydrant. Something smells rotten in Denmark as we leave Yang to moodily walk away from the airport where he sent off Julia to safety with a mission from High Command: capture or destroy Iserlohn Fortress, the Imperial strongpoint that has already crushed six heavily armed fleets with its magnetic grand cannon "Thor Hammer". To make matters worse, he has to do it using the recently formed 13th fleet, a ragtag crew of survivors of Astarte bolstered with new recruits.
Ep 4 is Reinhard's turn as we find out his motivations: saving his sister from the Kaiser's concubinage and reform the corrupt Empire. We see the extended flashback of Siegfried Kircheis, Reinhard's loyal friend and second-in-command, as we go back 10 years on when Reinhard decided to take down the Empire. It ends with Annerose, Reinhard's sister asking Sieg to look out for her little brother. As of this ep, his mission is going well and he's been promoted to Imperial Fleet Commander of the entire Imperial Navy.
A fascinating duo of episodes as we are shown both sides having assholes, when usually we only get shown one. This is where you realize the first hints that this is no simple space opera but a multi-layered epic.
Ep 5 follows Sieg as he puts down the Kalstrop Rebellion bloodlessly, defeating the Artemis Necklace satellite defense system that already cost the Empire a fleet. It's a nice little character sketch for the man and it also emphasizes the corruption of the Empire - which was one of the main resons for the Kalstrop revolt, which was lead by Kalstrop mostly because he didn't want to give up his wealth. Sieg's the hero of the hour and confirms his promotion to Vice Admiral.
Ep 6 picks off with Yang Wenli's formation of his fleet for the Iserlohnn assault; getting a brilliant young aide in the form of Lt. JG Frederica Greenhill, with whome he has a previous history, and a tough regiment of soldiers in the form of the Rosenritter, a troop formed from Imperial exiles which has had a bad history with command. We see the opening plays for the battle for Iserlohnn as Yang sends off the Rosenritter in a Trojan Horse tactic to infiltrate the base; a fake distress signal lures the stationed Iserlohnn fleet away, while the Bremen and its detachment of Rosenritter enter the planet-sized space fortress under "attack" from the 13th fleet.
The episode ends the 13th fleet backs off, phase one for the Battle of Iserlohnn completed.
The first 6 episodes are much more than that actually, with hints of intrigue, plotting and layered history hinted at by a large secondary cast ranging from Julian Munci, Yang's teenaged housekeeper to Kaiser Frederich IV of the Galactic Empire.
And the soundtrack is beautiful - I can count on one hand the times where modern tracks are used and not the classical music of Mahler, Mozart and their peers. The climactic battle sequence of Episode 1 is set to Ravel's Bolero. This is truly a space _opera_.
I'll keep on putting the details here on my lj as I progress through it.
At work, no less. Hopefully no one peeks in. ^_-
Central Anime has them up at scarywater and they're up to the 84th episode of a 110 episode series - with 3 movies and a 52 episode Gaiden series still not being subbed.
Ginga Eiyu Densetsu, or as the fake German on the sub has it Heldensagen vom Kosmosinsel, is essentially a story about a centuries long galactic war between the Free Planets Alliance and the Galactic Empire, the soldiers who fight it, the admirals who lead them, and everyone else in between. The sensibility it projects is that of The Romance of The Three Kingdoms but set in the future. But that's an oversimplification.
Episode 1 starts with a bang as we are introduced to the setting: two interstellar countries at war with a third playing Switzerland in between. A major battle is about to begin in the Astarte system and we get to zoom in. This is when we meet the two main characters: Reinhard von Lohengramm is fleet admiral of the Galactic Empire who is outnumbered 3 to 1, but he has a plan; Yang Wenli, hero of El Facil, is a laid-back tactical genius for the Alliance who's advice of caution is ignored because the fleet commanders are sure in their numerical superiority and divide the fleet into sub-fleets for an encirclement.
Guess who wins, the man with the plan or the guys who outnumber him?
Reinhard picks off the divided fleets one-by-one and cuts the lead in numbers making it into a fair fight. The perspective shifts around during the battle catching the reactions of everyone from the lowest "fighter" pilot to the fleet captains. Heck, we even have a "touching death" sequence: you know the guy takes out a picture of his girl then dies. It sounds cliche but really it was done nice.
At the end of episode 1, the remaining Alliance fleet is up the creek without a paddle as Reinhard goes in for the kill.
Episode 2 starts with Yang getting the chance to take over when his commander gets injured. Yang consolidates his command and with a tactical maneuver turns the entire battle into a stalemate.
Side note: though space is 3d, much of the battle tactics make more sense in a 2d battle - I'd have done more three-dimensional maneuvering if I were Yang or Reinhard. But the series seems to be more a space opera/drama than a Honor Harrington novel or any other work of military science fiction so we'll just let that pass.
Anyway, shifting perspectives again is used to demonstrate everything happening - quite to good effect actually.
The episode ends with Reinhard backing off and heading home - with the Alliance and the Empire both declaring themselves the winner; the Alliance won by spind doctoring their claim of being left on the field of battle and the Empire won by killing 1.5 million soldiers to their 25,000 loss.
Guess we all know who really won that one, huh?
Episodes 3 and 4 are character chapters. Ep 3 is with Yang Wenli as he gets promoted to Admiral for his win and how he exactly got roped into the military. We also see Lapp's poor fiancee, Julia, harassed by Space-Nazis controlled by the granstanding Alliance Secretary of Defense who she embarassed and how Yang shuts them down with a fire hydrant. Something smells rotten in Denmark as we leave Yang to moodily walk away from the airport where he sent off Julia to safety with a mission from High Command: capture or destroy Iserlohn Fortress, the Imperial strongpoint that has already crushed six heavily armed fleets with its magnetic grand cannon "Thor Hammer". To make matters worse, he has to do it using the recently formed 13th fleet, a ragtag crew of survivors of Astarte bolstered with new recruits.
Ep 4 is Reinhard's turn as we find out his motivations: saving his sister from the Kaiser's concubinage and reform the corrupt Empire. We see the extended flashback of Siegfried Kircheis, Reinhard's loyal friend and second-in-command, as we go back 10 years on when Reinhard decided to take down the Empire. It ends with Annerose, Reinhard's sister asking Sieg to look out for her little brother. As of this ep, his mission is going well and he's been promoted to Imperial Fleet Commander of the entire Imperial Navy.
A fascinating duo of episodes as we are shown both sides having assholes, when usually we only get shown one. This is where you realize the first hints that this is no simple space opera but a multi-layered epic.
Ep 5 follows Sieg as he puts down the Kalstrop Rebellion bloodlessly, defeating the Artemis Necklace satellite defense system that already cost the Empire a fleet. It's a nice little character sketch for the man and it also emphasizes the corruption of the Empire - which was one of the main resons for the Kalstrop revolt, which was lead by Kalstrop mostly because he didn't want to give up his wealth. Sieg's the hero of the hour and confirms his promotion to Vice Admiral.
Ep 6 picks off with Yang Wenli's formation of his fleet for the Iserlohnn assault; getting a brilliant young aide in the form of Lt. JG Frederica Greenhill, with whome he has a previous history, and a tough regiment of soldiers in the form of the Rosenritter, a troop formed from Imperial exiles which has had a bad history with command. We see the opening plays for the battle for Iserlohnn as Yang sends off the Rosenritter in a Trojan Horse tactic to infiltrate the base; a fake distress signal lures the stationed Iserlohnn fleet away, while the Bremen and its detachment of Rosenritter enter the planet-sized space fortress under "attack" from the 13th fleet.
The episode ends the 13th fleet backs off, phase one for the Battle of Iserlohnn completed.
The first 6 episodes are much more than that actually, with hints of intrigue, plotting and layered history hinted at by a large secondary cast ranging from Julian Munci, Yang's teenaged housekeeper to Kaiser Frederich IV of the Galactic Empire.
And the soundtrack is beautiful - I can count on one hand the times where modern tracks are used and not the classical music of Mahler, Mozart and their peers. The climactic battle sequence of Episode 1 is set to Ravel's Bolero. This is truly a space _opera_.
I'll keep on putting the details here on my lj as I progress through it.